In the past, many devices have been proposed for clamping the tail of a fish, or a portion of a fowl or small mammal carcass, in order that the fish or other animal can be immobilized to prevent its slippage during the cleaning and/or descaling or skinning of the animal, but in each known instance, these prior art devices were unwieldy, expensive, and caused the cleaning and/or scaling operation to be a slow, tedious task.
Various types of clamping arrangements have been proposed for use in these devices, these including different types of spring-biased means as well as over-center cam type components that achieved a form of locking action upon the tail of the fish or the animal carcass.
A fixed amount of clamping pressure was usually involved in these earlier arrangements, however, which meant that sometimes the clamping pressure was so tight as to actually sever the tail, with such a tightly grasping clamp also being very difficult for a young person or a lady to use. On the other hand, if the clamping pressure was not great enough, the animal or fish being cleaned or descaled would slip out of the fixture, thus consuming a tangible amount of time before the fish or other animal could be reclamped.
A further problem involved the wasting of a finite amount of time due to these prior art devices requiring two hands for the clamping operation, meaning that the fish or other animal had to be lifted into the desired position, then released so that both hands could be utilized in the procedure of securing the fish, fowl or mammal by the clamping means.
A still further problem involved the user selecting between the alternatives of a long setup time, or else the dedication of the table or bench upon which the prior art device was used over to its exclusive use for fish and animal cleaning, descaling or skinning, as the case may be.
It was to overcome these and other disadvantages of the prior art that the present invention was evolved.